Re: FN-FORUM: [OT] flippancy - What's the best development platform for creating Web 2.0 business applications?

date posted 22nd November 2007 09:54

> Well if I come across as "holier than thou" I appologise. However,
> stating
> that you shouldn't use an auto-incrementing integer field as a primary
> key,
> and instead you should *always* use a field natural to the row, is just
> wrong - please tell me I'm not the only person on this entire forum who
> knows that?!

I've never had much DB training, apart from as part of a Mechanical
Engineering degree, but in my mind using an auto-incrementing integer ID
seems quite logical. Allows any of the data for an "item" to change
without it becoming a new item. Also makes for consistency, as all tables
that need to be referred to have `id` as their primary key name.

Isn't this what auto-incrementing fields are designed for?

Interesting discussion - you never know I might learn how to design
databases better :)

Anthony
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